


Sleeping Idiots

by wineandpencils



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Fluff, Lance is full of sin, M/M, Sleepwalking
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-27
Updated: 2016-08-27
Packaged: 2018-08-11 07:40:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7882546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wineandpencils/pseuds/wineandpencils
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lance has a sleepwalking problem.</p>
<p>Well, not exactly.</p>
<p>(Or, the one where Shiro won’t stop sleepwalking into Lance’s bed and Lance is weak and full of sin.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sleeping Idiots

The thing about space— the thing about living on a castle that’s actually an alien spaceship that can travel through wormholes at a moment’s notice and runs on weird alien magic is that it’s impossible to have a normal sleep cycle. Lance has _tried_. A few weeks into the whole Voltron shtick, he figured out how to program the castle’s computer to ping him when it’s time for bed—exactly fifteen hours after he’s woken, because he might be one of the few beings capable of saving the universe but he’ll be damned if he misses out on his eight hours of beauty sleep (plus an extra one for his pre-bed skin routine. What? When they finally defeat Zarkon, he fully expects monuments to be built in his image and he’ll be damned if he looks like a wrinkled plastic bag when that time comes).

Except the universe doesn’t seem to care about his need to rest properly because if the Galra aren’t attacking, then it’s team “bonding” (more like _death_ ), or some far off planet of sentient beings asking for help finding ancient artifacts, or reconnaissance, or supply runs, or whatever. 

In short, Lance hasn’t had a proper night’s sleep since before this whole Voltron mess began and it’s beginning to affect him. (In a moment of weakness, he dared to ask the other paladins how they did it: Pidge and Hunk had admitted to falling asleep in their lions from time to time, while Keith had sneered at Lance that only the weak needed to sleep, which like _hell_ was Lance letting that one go and before he knew it, he and Keith found themselves assigned to cleaning the training room for attempting to fistfight with their feet while trapped in a cave on a hostile planet. When Shiro and Allura had burst into the cave to save the group, they had not been impressed with Keith and Lance’s antics.) The results aren’t pleasant. He finds himself drifting off during meals more often than not, his mind wandering during training exercises. He’s not the only one: Hunk actually burns dinner one night, which leaves everyone choking down Coran’s cooking; Pidge breaks an arm when they fall asleep while installing a new cloaking device in the head of the red lion, which earns them a few hours in the healing pod; Keith becomes even more pouty and short-tempered, even going so far as to become teary-eyed when he loses against a training bot; even Shiro is affected, the bags under his eyes becoming more and more pronounced as the days pass. And though they require less sleep than the humans on board, Lance has seen Coran and the mice snoozing at their stations, while Allura has begun to take “long walks” which always end up in her suite.

They’re all exhausted and cranky and stressed and Lance feels like he’s about to snap. Surprisingly, Keith beats him to it.

“All right, that’s it!” Keith yanks his helmet off and throws it at wall, his eyebrows still smoking from running into the electric wall for the third time. “I can’t fucking do this anymore.”

Pidge bristles from where they’re sitting at the microphone.  They’ve been paired with Keith for the exercise and though the pair normally makes it through the minefield relatively unscathed, Keith hasn’t yet made it past the first level. “Hey! It’s not my fault you suck at taking directions!”

Keith groans, grabbing and pulling at his hair with his hands. “I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about the fact that we’re exhausted. We’ve been chasing the Galra and helping whatever beings we come across and training and we haven’t had a chance to _rest_ since this whole thing started.” He jabbed a finger at Allura and Coran. “You Alteans may not need that much rest but the rest of the people on this ship are _human_ and _humans_ have this thing called a _threshold_ and that means we need a fucking night off.”

As exhausted as he is, Lance feels the part of himself that demands he prove Keith wrong light up at Keith’s words. Haha! Even the mighty Keith needed rest! So much for “sleep is for the weak”. Lance opens his mouth to crow about how he was _right, sleep isn’t for the weak, everyone needs at least eight hours just like my mama told me_. As if sensing his intent, Hunk hooks an arm around Lance’s shoulders, shaking his head minutely. 

“Not the time,” he mutters out the corner of his mouth.

Lance pouts. “But—“

“Keith, I know you must be exhausted but the Galra Empire—“Allura begins.

Keith slices a hand through the air. “Enough about the Galra! Yes, we have to fight and yes, we’re nowhere near ready to take on Zarkon but we’re useless to everyone if we can’t even stay awake while piloting our lions!” Pidge and Hunk both wince at the unsaid accusation. 

“The healing pods are amazing at healing injuries but they don’t do anything about exhaustion and we’re literally _dead_ if we go out there the way we are now.” Keith rounds on Shiro, pining him with an accusing stare. “Shiro, you know I’m right!”

Everyone mirrors Keith and turns to Shiro, who’s been quiet since the argument started. He stares back at Keith, gray eyes unreadable, before sighing and pinching the bridge of his nose. “Keith’s right, Allura. We can’t keep refusing to take care of our bodies like this; we’re far more likely to get injured this way than improve.” He looks at Allura. “We need a break.”

“And a proper sleeping schedule,” Pidge adds.

Allura frowns before nodding tightly. “You paladins know your bodies better than I ever will. If it’s a break that you need, we’ll take it.” Pidge clears their throat. “ _And_ a proper sleeping schedule. I’ll program the Castle to have a day and night cycle that more closely suits the needs of you all to help facilitate the process.”

“And maybe we could all go to bed right now, that’d be great, cause, you know, it’d be like midnight if we were back on Earth right now and that’s pretty late, right?” Hunk gives Allura a hopeful smile.

“…And you can all go to bed now.” Though she sounds resigned, there’s a slight smile to Allura’s lips that no one comments on. They all know she has a soft spot for Hunk’s cooking; she’d been the most devastated of them all the evening Hunk had burned dinner. 

Lance fist pumps, whooping in excitement at the thought of his bed, all soft and comfy, with fresh sheets smelling of detergent (or at least he hoped it was detergent. Who knew what the Castle used to clean the linens?), the lights dimmed low and quiet classical music playing in the background. A slight flush rises to his cheeks. Maybe even a little… time to himself. 

“All right everyone,” Shiro rests a hand on Pidge’s shoulder. “Let’s hit the showers. Barring an emergency, we’ll dial down the training for the next few days, give ourselves a chance to rest up.”

Lance barely waits for Shiro to finish speaking, already sprinting out of the room to the communal showers. Normally he enjoys a long soak (as it turns out Alteans? _Masters_ at baths) but tonight—tonight he’s on a mission to get to bed as early as possible, as fast as possible. He rushes through a shower, barely soaping himself up before rinsing off and slip-skidding back to his bedroom on wet feet. And then he’s in his bed, snuggled between his covers, noise-cancelling headphones on, waiting for the wings of sleep to take him.

 

The wings of sleep.

 

 

The wings of sleep.

 

 

The _wings of sleep_.

 

 

Jesus.

 

 

Lance rolls onto his side to stare at the wall, back to the rest of the room. It’s ironic, he thinks, that just when he finally has the chance to sleep, he can’t. Back on Earth, he’d never had this problem. He’d been one of those kids who’d run full-tilt at the world while awake, his energy nonstop and bubbling, right up until the moment his head hit his pillow—then, he’d be lights out until it was morning, tiny limbs heavy with exhaustion and contentment. When he’d hit his teens, his energy had had a more structured outlet through the Garrison, the training process draining him physically and mentally by the end of each day. But now…

Now he has a reason to stay awake, he thinks. The last few months as a paladin have been difficult, not solely because of the physical and mental strain, but because of the emotional one. There were times Lance worried he’d never stop seeing the bodies of those they’d arrived too late to save, limbs twisted, faces marred beyond belief. They don’t really talk about it much, what they see. Lance understands why: some days, it’s only by pretending that they’ve somehow managed to save more than they’ve been unable to help that allows the team to function. Forming Voltron was becoming easier and easier, true, but they’d stopped doing mental alignment exercises after the last time they’d tried and one of them (who was he fooling, they all knew it had been him) had had a flashback to the dead bodies that had sent everyone reeling and Hunk hurling. 

So, they don’t talk much about their failures. It wasn’t healthy, no, but it worked. Mostly. His mother would have called it grieving.

“What time is it on Earth right now?” he murmurs Castle, voice quiet. “No audio.”

A green projection appears on the wall, the time 3:43 AM displayed. His parents are probably still in bed,  will be for another two hours. Then his father will rise to make a cup of coffee for his mother. His mother always claimed that she only married her husband because he’d promised her a fresh cup of coffee every morning she lived. “He’s never missed a day yet,” she’d always say, eyes warm and soft, a small smile gracing her face. When Lance had been a kid, he’d asked her time and again if his father had ever missed a morning due to sickness or being away or even injury, but his mother had always shook her head and said, “No. He always made it in time.”

There’s a hot feeling behind Lance’s eyes. He’ll be the first to admit that he’s homesick—coming from a large family with nine brothers and sisters, and a mother and father desperately in love even after decades together, he knows that he has more to miss than some. (He’s asked Keith before whether he missed anyone. Keith had looked down at the bayard held in his hand, a sad tilt to his head. “No,” he said. “Everyone I care about came with me.”) Sure, he’d been homesick in the Garrison, but it had been different; with so many students and instructors million about in the hallways, it had almost felt like normal, like one large, extended family comprised solely of distant cousins. Out here in space, he only has his fellow paladins, two aliens, and a handful of mice. _And Blue_ , he reminds himself. But it isn’t the the same.

Sniffling, Lance flips onto his back— _oh holy God what was that?_

Lance knows for a fact that his habit of wearing noise-cancelling headphones is a problem: more than once he’s been late to training or an emergency meeting because he didn’t hear the alarms blaring across the ship. In deference to that fact, he’s taken to not wearing his eye mask to bed, so at least the flashing lights will wake him.

But nothing— _nothing_ —prepares him for the sight of a hulking mass standing in his doorway, the light from the hallway throwing their features into darkness. Lance can’t hear himself but he’s one thousand percent sure that he let out a squeaky “meep!” at the sight, heart picking up and thundering away in his chest, sweat breaking out on his forehead. He’s going to die. Just when he finally thought he could let his defenses down, the Castle ends up invaded by enemy aliens who’ve found come to kill them all and Lance, stupid stupid Lance, _hadn’t even heard them come in_. Were his friends dead already? Oh god, what if Hunk had been calling for help all this time? His room was right down the hall from Lance’s—what if he was injured? 

A trickle of sweat runs down the side of his face. He hasn’t blinked since he turned over and his eyes are beginning to burn but what if the attacker is only moves when you blink? Like those aliens in that show he saw one time—or were they statues? Oh God, it doesn’t matter because there’s no way he can’t _not_ blink—what if he just squints his eyes really close together so the air doesn’t blow on them? Does that count? Or maybe if he blinks one eyes at a time, like he’s winking at the alien but would that be considered a proposal—

He blinks.

_Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, he blinked._

(Not for the first time, Lance wonders why he does this to himself.)

Lance squeezes his eyes shut, fully expecting a swift yet painful death, maybe some loud screaming that will hopefully alert the others. ( _Unless they’re already dead_ , his brain unhelpfully reminds him. He’s _never_ wearing headphones to bed again.) He really hopes that he’s actually killed and not, like, severely maimed from the first blow. Because, as much as Lance has come to terms with that fact that he’s likely to die piloting Blue, dying a slow death? That would _suck._

Apparently, coming to terms with his impending doom means that his brain to mouth filter vanishes because he finds himself babbling uncontrollably.

Listen, man, dude, alien, lady, being, just— I’d really appreciate it if you made this quick cause like I haven’t gotten a lot of sleep recently which really sucks and I kind of don’t know if everyone else is dead and if they are, I really don’t wanna like survive your attack and then have to go find their bodies and then prepare a funeral service because I kind of already know I’m going to be the first one to die as a paladin and I really haven’t made any other contingency plans yet for how to cope with everyone else’s death, which, you probably don’t care about because, after all, you’re here to kill me—what I’m trying to say is it that I’ll shut up now because I feel like I’m only a couple words away from peeing myself?? And that would be really awkward??” Lance’s laugh is strangled. “Yeah, I’m just gonna—“ 

He zips his lips shut and waits for death, thoughts spiraling out of control. He thinks of his family, about how they’ll never know what happened to him, how they’ll only know that he deserted the Garrison, never that he was a hero who saved people and suddenly he’s angry. Like, furiously angry, the kind that has him seeing red and struggling to breath. Because it’s not _fair_ —that he dies here, in his bed, unable to put up a fight after working so hard to become a paladin worthy of saving the universe. He’s not the best—he _knows_ that—but he works hard and has passion and even though the others don’t see it, he’s spent long nights in the training room improving his shooting skills so he never misses a target, stays after everyone else has left to spend more time with Blue, trying to become one seamless pair so they’d never hesitate on the battlefield, yet here his is, about to die in _bed_.

Sitting up, he yanks his headphones off his head, blinking rapidly to clear the black spots from his vision. “You know what, I—!” He stops short, vision clearing enough for him to take in the figure in the doorway. “Shiro?”

And it is Shiro, standing there in his work out gear like always, staring at Lance. Lance clutches at his chest as his heart twinges in his chest at the rapid drop in adrenaline. “Dude, you scared the shit out of me. Is something wrong?” he asks, because Shiro has never visited him in his room and probably wouldn’t unless there were an emergency. (Which isn’t to say that Lance hasn’t had the occasional fantasy about Shiro visiting for _other_ reasons but the chances of those fantasies coming through were definitely in the negative zero percent.)

Shiro stands there, staring at him, saying nothing.

“Umm…” Lance trails off. Unease rising, Lance slides out of bed and approaches slowly. “Shiro…?”

Up close, he can see that Shiro’s eyes have a glassy tone to them, his gaze slightly unfocused, his facial muscles slack and relaxed, except for the small frown between his brows. Strangely it makes him look younger than he is.

Lance waves a hand in front of Shiro’s face. Shiro kinda of…huffs? but otherwise he doesn’t respond to the movement except to blink slowly. 

“Right,” Lance says decisively. “Either you’ve been possessed or you’re sleepwalking.”

Lance recognized the signs: his youngest brother had been a sleepwalker, stumbling about their home at odd hours of the night before usually ending up in the kitchen, where’d he’d sit on the floor and eat sticks of butter. It had creeped Lance out the first few times it’d happened, but after a while the entire family had just accepted it and learned to simply guide him back to bed if they saw him up and about. Lance didn’t remember much about _why_ it happened, but he did remember what it looked like: slack features, glassy eyes, slow to no response time. Shiro was a classic sleepwalker.

Lance sighs and runs a hand through his hair. Nothing to do except to take Shiro back to his own room and put him to bed. “Dude, not exactly what I imagined when you said everyone had an early night.” He lifts a hand, hesitating briefly, before resting it gently on Shiro’s shoulder. The shirt Shiro’s wearing is warm from his body heat, a fact Lance staunchly ignores as you prods Shiro out of the room. 

It’s only when they enter into the corridor that Lance realizes that Shiro’s barefoot. Lance stares at the pale figures against the floor, the bones strangely delicate for a guy who’s seen more horrors than anyone that young should. He snaps his eyes back up to Shiro. He swallows. “Let’s go, yeah?”

It’s weird directing Shiro through the halls of the Castle. Shiro is silent, sort of staring into the distance with glassy eyes; whenever Lance nudges him around a corner, he goes without protest or resistance, as if he’d been planning on it anyway. Lance has walked the halls late at night before (midnight snacks are called midnight snacks for a reason) but it’s unnerving to only hear the shuffle of his own footsteps—Shiro, even in his sleep, is somehow soundless. 

When they arrive at Shiro’s room, Lance pauses. The door is locked. He shoots the sleeping Shiro a glance from the corner of his eye. 

“Any chance you can enter the passcode?” he asks, not really expecting an answer. He doesn’t get one.

He bites his lip, looking at Shiro again to make sure he still looks glassy eyed. Well, it wasn’t like he’d remember it in the morning anyway…

Quickly, Lance pulls up the castle’s systems on the computer panel, flipping through the various sections until he arrives at Shiro’s room. Brow furrowing and tongue peeking out from his mouth, he begins hacking into the system, trying to override the passcode. It takes a few moments, but Lance lets out a pleased murmur when the light beside the keyboard glows green and the locks disengage. Clearing the castle logs of his access and wiping the history, he closes the panel and enters the room.

Shiro’s room is sparse. Well, all their rooms are sparse, it’s not as if they’d had time to grab personal belongings before they’d high-tailed it away from Earth, but Lance knows for a fact that he isn’t the only one who’ll occasionally keep a souvenir or two from planets they visit. Shiro’s room? Has none of that. It looks exactly like Lance’s did the day he moved in. The only sign that it’s inhabited by someone are the (black. What was it with Shiro and black?) clothes hanging in the closet and the unmade bed, pillow pushed against the far wall, and blanket shoved to the foot of the bed. It’s…sad.

“Okay, dude, let’s just…get you back to bed, yeah?” Lance says, gently prodding Shiro towards his bed. Shiro goes without any resistance, feet soundless as he pads across the room, coming to a stop before his bed. Lance pushes at his shoulder, easing him down onto the surface, before bending over and helping him swing his feet up (God, who knew that legs could be this heavy?? What the hell did Shiro _eat_?). He steps back, studying the picture before him: Shiro, on his back, arms splayed out beside him, black shirt rucked up slightly on his stomach, revealing a tantalizing strip of skin and a dark trail of hair leading down into the front of Shiro’s—

Lance jerks his eyes skyward, staring intently at the ceiling. _Nope, nope, nope, there shall be_ no _perving on team leaders who are sleepwalking and defenseless and warm and barefoot._ His mama taught him better than that.

Shiro stares up at him blankly, almost trustingly, from beneath the fringe of his hair. It makes Lance want to reach over and push the premature white hair back. He folds his arms instead, holding onto his biceps.

“Okay. Close your eyes now. It’s time for bed.” He tries, and fails, at sounding stern. Shiro blinks up at him. “You heard me. Eyes closed. Bedtime.”

For a long moment he expects Shiro to continue staring at him; surprisingly, Shiro blinks once more before shutting his eyes and letting out a quiet breath. Lance waits for moment but when it’s apparent that nothing else is forthcoming, he slowly backs away. He pauses at the doorway, looking back at Shiro. He thinks that for a guy who has to lead four teenagers into battle almost daily and carries the weight of the universe on his shoulders, he looks lonely and not a little bit cold by himself on the bed. 

Tiptoeing back into the room, Lance grabs the blanket from the foot of the bed, fluffing it out over Shiro’s prone form, refusing to think too hard when he tucks the blanket under Shiro’s chin, smoothing out the fabric. Satisfied, he turns out the light, and closes the door behind him.

 

___

 

It’s not until the next morning, halfway to through a late breakfast, that it occurs to Lance that Shiro either knew the passcode to Lance’s bedroom or  somehow, impossibly, Shiro was able to hack into the Castle’s systems and break into Lance’s room. While sleepwalking.

Keith is more than happy to repeatedly slap Lance on the back when he inevitably chokes. 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> My first fic in over five years(?) and of course I choose to write fluff. In any case, I wrote this all in one late-night fugue state that may or may still be going strong. It hasn't been beta read but I tried my best to read through for mistakes. Comments and kudos welcome, especially since I just watched Voltron and am looking for fellow fans.
> 
> I can be found on tumblr at wineandpencils.tumblr.com


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